Stefan's Florilegium

M-Wash-Cookbk-art

Martha
Washington's Boke of Cookery, and Booke of Sweetmeats: being a Family

Manuscript...
Contains some Elizabethan and Jacobean recipes, dating approximately between
1550 and 1625.

It is a manuscript cookbook of the Custis
family. Martha Dandridge married into the Custis family and was given the
cookbook. The widowed Martha Dandridge Custis later married George Washington,
hence the Martha

This
file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have
collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date
back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday.

This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's
Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at:
http://www.florilegium.org

I
have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate
topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous
information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save
space and remove clutter.

The
comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no
claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors.

Please
respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The
copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is
published from these messages, please give credit to the originator(s).

I
went to the State Library during lunch to find some information about

Marthe
Washington's Booke of Cookery, instead I find the book, so here

is
the skinny.

Hess,
Karen; Matha Washington's Booke of Cookery: Columbia University

Press,
New York, 1981. ISBN 0-231-04930-7.

The
book is two manuscripts, A Booke of Cookery and A Booke of

Sweetmeats,
presented to Martha Dandridge in 1749, the year she married

Daniel
Custis. Later the Widow Custis married George Washington, thus

the
title of the book. In 1799, she gave the book to her granddaughter,

Nelly
Custis.

Ms
Hess places the recipes in the manuscripts as being Elizabethan and

Jacobean,
dating approximately between 1550 and 1625, describing her

comparison
of the recipes in the manuscripts with the recipes contained

in
contemporary and earlier cookbooks.

Bear

Date:
Mon, 03 Sep 2001 23:10:12 -0400

From:
johnna holloway <johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu>

To:
sca-cooks at ansteorra.org

Subject:
Re: [Sca-cooks] cherry//MW's Booke

Martha
Washington's Booke of Cookery, with introduction

and
extensive commentary by noted food historian Karen

Hess
is a transcription of two books of recipes that

date
back to Elizabethan and Jacobean England. The originals

came
into the possession of Martha Washington through

her
first marriage to Daniel Custis and then passed from

Martha
to her granddaughter Nelly Custis. (It's obvious

that
Martha Washington was the most important name to

be
attached to the manuscript, so it bears her name.)

"A
Booke of Cookery contains 205 recipes, while "The

Booke
of Sweetmeates" contains 326. Hess believes that

the
recipes were recopied in the 1650's by possibly Lady

Berkeley
or even possibly Lady Berkeley's mother from an

earlier
family collection, the evidence for this being that

the
recipes here are in the same hand and there are indications

that
they were copied from beginning to end as one project.

What
survives is not a collection compiled by different hands, nor

is an
accretive collection added to over several generations.

What
remains is a one time project whereby someone neatly wrote

down
from start to finish the surviving document. The

recipes
themselves come from or are similar to works

published
dated as early as 1608 and even earlier. Thus, it is a great

17th
century source and very much akin to the Elinor Fettiplace mss.

Hess
reproduces the original recipe and then adds sometimes

as
many as two or three pages of commentary on terms, history, use, etc.

The
work also contains a great bibliography and is fully indexed.

Published
originally in 1981. Still in print for 22.00 usd.

Lady
Johnnae llyn Lewis

Date: Mon, 03 Sep 2001 23:41:50 -0400

From: johnna holloway <johnna at
sitka.engin.umich.edu>

To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org, stefan at
texas.net

Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] cherry
wine/cider

Stefan li Rous wrote:

> Johnnae llyn Lewis said:

> > The Tudor-Jacobean "A
Booke of Sweetmeats" which is included

> > as part of Martha Washington's
Booke of Cookerie has a recipe

> > for "To Make Cherry
Wine" on pages 378-379. That would date

> > cherry wine prior to Digby.

>

> Both of the these books were
written/added to over a long time period.

> Is there something in the two
recipes that indicates one was written

> before the other?

Yes, MW's Booke seems to predate Digby.
Having actually

sat down and read the one English
biography of Digby published in 1956,

I have seen very little evidence that
Digby really started

his collection of recipes prior to
Venetia's death in 1633.

They were ordered into the published
format by George Hartmann

from Digby's rough notes made after his
death in 1665.

Karen Hess dates the MWBofC to being
copied in the 1650's( or even earlier) from an earlier manuscript. See my post of
earlier this

evening to Volker's query regarding this
dating. No one that I have read in the past 20 years has challenged Hess on her
dating of the MWB. It

can be described as Tudor-Jacobean, as
many individual recipes

have counterparts in both Tudor
(Elizabeth 1 was a Tudor)

and Jacobean cookery books. Compare for
example Doctor Steephen's

Cordial Water which dates back to Cogan's
work of 1584. Other

individual recipes also date back to or
are similar to Plat, Dawson, etc.

Johnna Holloway

From: "Decker, Terry D."
<TerryD at Health.State.OK.US>

To: "'sca-cooks at
ansteorra.org'" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

Subject: RE: [Sca-cooks] cherry
wine/cider

Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2001 08:37:42 -0500

It is a manuscript cookbook of the Custis
family. Martha Dandridge married into the Custis family and was given the
cookbook. The widowed Martha Dandridge Custis later married George Washington,
hence the Martha

Washington title.

IIRC, the earliest datable recipe in the
collection is from around 1540 and is identifiable because it is a copy from
another source.

Bear

> This may be enough to being me
before HUAC, but

> what exactly is Martha Washington's
booke of

> Cookerie? I always assumed it was
some kind of

> manuscript published by patriotic
homemakers. Now

> it contains 200-year-old recipe
collections?

>

> puzzled

>

> Giano

Date: Wed, 07 Apr 2010 18:59:44 -0400

From: Johnna Holloway <johnnae at mac.com>

To: Cooks within the SCA
<sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Martha
Washington's Booke of Cookery

On Apr 7, 2010, at 4:01 PM, Sandra Kisner wrote:

<<< We have mentioned "Martha
Washington's Booke of Cookery" (edited by

Karen Hess) in the past. I have recently
seen a book with a similar

title, but the name attached is Marie Kimball.
Is anybody familiar

with this version?

Sandra >>>

It's an earlier version. Non
annotated.

Amazon notes for the 2004 paperback
that in 1892 the Lewis family

presented the original manuscript to
The Historical Society of

Pennsylvania where it still resides
today.

"In 1940, the Society gave
special permission to historian Marie

Kimball to study the manuscript and
prepare a cookbook entitled, "The

Martha Washington Cook Book." Mrs.
Kimball fully adapted Martha's

cookbook to practical, modern use.
All the recipes were proportioned

to our current practice of a formula
for serving six people. Each

recipe was tested. It is not only
correct, but tastes great!

The Martha Washington Cook Book by
Marie Kimball was published in

1940. It has now, of course, long
been out-of-print until this

historic 2004 limited edition
reprint."

So skip this Kimball edition and just
buy the Hess edited version

published by Columbia University
Press.

Johnnae

Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2010 16:39:45 -0700

From: Patricia Dunham <chimene at ravensgard.org>

To: Cooks within the SCA
<sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Martha
Washington's Booke of Cookery

According to reader reviews on the
Amazon page for the 2004 printing,

the Kimball version includes few recipes and
those have all been

"modernized" by Ms Kimball.

<<< We have mentioned "Martha
Washington's Booke of Cookery" (edited by

<<< So skip this Kimball edition and
just buy the Hess edited version published by Columbia University Press.
>>>

Speaking as one who knows a little,
and knows it is a little, of both fields, Hess is arguably one of the best, if
not the best, authorities on both culinary manuscript geekery and practical
cookery knowledge in one person's body. There are a lot of books written and
edited by a lot of people who know one or the other really well; few do both as
well as she does.

Adamantius

Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2010 00:19:31 -0500

From: "Terry Decker"
<t.d.decker at att.net>

To: <yaini0625 at yahoo.com>, "Cooks
within the SCA"

<sca-cooks
at lists.ansteorra.org>

Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Martha
Washington's Booke of Cookery

<<< There is a Martha Washington
cookbook mentioned on www.foodtimeline.org.

Is this the same "cookbook?"
>>>

Yes. Martha Washington's
cookbook is a manuscript cookbook once owned by

the first First Lady of the United
States. If you look at the Food Timeline

Bibliography, they list the Hess
version, which is the preferred edition of

culinary historians and historical
cooks. The earliest datable recipe in

the collection is from the mid 16th
Century and the entire collection covers

about 200 years of culinary history.
IIRC, the cookbook was a prized

possession of the Custis family and
Martha Dandridge received her copy from

her mother-in-law when she married
Daniel Custis.

Bear

Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2010 11:54:35 -0400

From: "Ron Carnegie"
<r.carnegie at verizon.net>

To: "'Cooks within the
SCA'" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Books was
Martha Washington's Booke of

Cookery

This would certainly be the
more accurate understanding of this book. It

is called "Martha Washington's
book of cookery" because that will sell more

copies than "Frances Parke
Custis' book of Cookery". I don't believe it is

clear who actually first started
collecting the receipts in the book, but it

was NOT Martha. Two book find
themselves in this odd situation. The one we

are discussing and "George
Washington's Rules of Civility". Neither of

these were authored by the people to
whom they are attributed.

Ranald de Balinhard, who is in the
mundane world a Washington Scholar

<<< It's far better to think of Martha
Washington as a woman of her

time who was given a bound culinary manuscript
upon her first marriage

in 1749 and who in time passed that manuscript
along to her granddaughter